


Knot My Beta

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Beta Ben Solo, Beta Rey (Star Wars), Crack, F/M, No Pregnancy, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), copious descriptions of bodily fluids, it's an ABfiascO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:42:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: In a world where most people fall neatly into “alpha” or “omega,” Ben Solo has just gone along with the assumption about his designation. Surely a big, tall, aggressive man such as himself must be an alpha, right?Rey has never fought particularly hard against the assumption that she’s an omega simply because she’s wiry and female. After all, it makes life easier to just go along with societal norms.This hasn’t been a problem for either of them up until now. What’s a beta to do when she thinks her supposedly alpha partner is expecting her to go into heat?





	Knot My Beta

**Author's Note:**

> it started with @reylo_prompts when they added "bonus points if they try to fake a heat/rut" to a prompt about beta!ben and beta!rey who are pretending to not be betas.
> 
> then i couldn't stop laughing about it and everyone on discord enabled me with discussion and brainstorming, particularly QueenOfCarrotFlowers (who is a gem for betaing [lol] this and giving me the title).
> 
> and then everyone who watched my twitter breakdown about this fic gave me even more fuel for how absolutely goddamn ridiculous this is.
> 
> so here i am, throwing my hat into the "i never thought i'd write A/B/O and yet here i am" ring with so many authors in this fine fandom.
> 
> (update: assume they're both on birth control and they've discussed it, which is why they don't bring it up here.)

Rey always made a show of opening up her heat tracker app and putting in fake data every evening. It was standard practice she’d been doing for years, ever since it became clear that a) she was never going to present as anything other than a beta and b) everyone expected her to be an omega. The addition of taking “suppressants” (tic-tacs stored in an old prescription pill bottle that had previously stored anti-anxiety medication) every night became a part of the routine when she started seeing Ben Solo, an alpha if she ever saw one. The lie had started long before they started dating; they met at a work function not long after Ben had taken a job at Skywalker Enterprises. There were so few betas that it was kind of embarrassing to be one.

Clearly, Ben Solo was an alpha. He was big and strong and aggressive, just like the stereotypes. Even if Rey couldn’t smell his alpha pheromones, she could tell just by looking at him. The instant attraction she felt to him was real, however, and it was the first time she’d ever wondered if that was what it was like to be an omega. She never bothered to correct his assumption that she was an omega on suppressants that made her really difficult to smell, and then by the time they started dating last month it was too late to bring it up. 

To be honest, she wasn’t entirely certain he was going to stick around anyway. People tended to get bored with Rey and abandon her. She figured she may as well wait for that to happen, then she’d never have to admit that she wasn’t an omega at all. What she didn’t count on was how deeply she was going to fall in love with Ben, and the fact that he’d love her back just as deeply. At some point along the way she’d almost completely forgotten about the whole fake omega thing until he asked her one night, “When are you due for a heat?” 

Shit.The thing was, according to her heat tracking app, she was due for one next week. In the past, she’d always used it as a sort of free vacation where she could just sit around the house watching netflix for a few days. But now that she was in a relationship with an alpha, he was going to expect to help her through it, wasn’t he? And it would no doubt trigger his rut, which was going to be a problem for Rey, because she’d seen alpha/omega heat porn and she did not think there was any way her vagina was going to manage a knot, even a small one. 

(Not that she’d seen Ben’s knot. Neither of them was in any huge rush with the more physical aspects of their relationship, mostly because—at least on Rey’s end—it was going to invite a lot of awkward questions about her lack of omega-ness.)

But she was in too deep now. The only thing to do was to pull out her phone, open the app, and show him what it said. Ben nodded, then said, “I can take heat leave for that.”

“Oh,” Rey said, nodding. “Cool.” 

He frowned at her. “You...don’t you want me to help you through it?”

“Of course I do!” she said, louder than was probably necessary. “Ben, I love you. I want you there.”

And then she kissed him, and they kept on kissing until he pulled away and said, “I, uh, don’t want to trigger your heat too early?” He said it like a question more than a statement.

“Oh,” she replied. Was that a thing, an alpha triggering an omega’s heat early just from a little kissing? “Uh. I think we’re good. But you’re right. Maybe we should stop.”

Fuck. She _ really _ needed to go home and do some research.

* * *

As soon as Rey was out the door, Ben scrambled for his laptop and frantically tumbled down a rabbit hole of gross google searches:

_ What do alphas do for omegas during heat _

_ Can a beta fake a knot _

_ How to shorten your refractory period _

_ What do alphas say during sex _

_ Can my omega tell that I’m a beta _

_ How to fake a rut _

Six hours later, he woke up from a dream where he’d been feeding Rey scrambled eggs, gatorade, and thick white protein shakes, which was apparently what happened when you fell asleep reading the search results for “best food to feed omegas during heat.”

He was so, so fucked.

The thing was, everyone took one look at Ben and assumed he was an alpha on impressively strong suppressants and that was why no one could scent him. So when Poe Dameron introduced him to Rey at a work mixer, his immediate reaction was _ Is this what it’s like meeting your perfect pheromone match for the first time? _ He’d never experienced physical attraction like this before, and before he knew it, he was leaning into the alpha thing harder than he ever had because he was so desperate to impress her. When they’d finally admitted their feelings for each other a month ago, he’d been too euphoric to realize what this was going to mean for their sex life. The fact that neither of them had pushed for anything physical to move below-the-belt was just as frustrating as it was a relief that he didn’t have to explain why he didn’t have a knot like the other alphas.

Okay. Well. The internet hadn’t been as helpful as he would have liked. “What do alphas say during sex” ended up leading him to some alpha/omega heat porn sites, and it turned out that it...really wasn’t his thing. Instead of feeling hot and bothered by the desperation in the omega’s “Knot me, alpha!” cries and the alpha’s responding “That’s right baby, take my knot!” Ben found himself feeling disgusted about the massive amount of bodily fluids the whole action was producing. _ Jesus, how much laundry do you have to do during heats?! _

_ But if it’s Rey, _ his brain argued, _ you’ll probably be into it. Let’s be real. You’re into _ everything _ Rey does. _

Still, he added “laundry detergent” to the list of pre-heat supplies he was going to buy for her.

Given that he’d had enough of his gross google searches, he decided to just ask Rey what she wanted.

> **Ben**: What do you normally do during heats? 
> 
> **Rey**: What do you mean?  
****
> 
> **Ben**: I want to make this as good for you as I can 

There was a pause, then an excruciating five minutes where the chat box flickered between _ Rey is typing _ and nothing.

> **Rey**: I’ve always done them by myself

Five minutes just to say _ that _?

> **Rey**: Why, what do you normally do during rut?

Shit. In all of his research, he hadn’t thought about what to say to her if she asked him this. 

> **Ben**: Same as you. I’ve always done it by myself.
> 
> **Rey**: So we’re both flying blind here

Ben’s tension eased just a fractional amount. If she didn’t know what usually happened during rut, she wouldn’t know that he was just as clueless as she was. However, there were two things that everyone knew about rut:

  1. Knotting
  2. Nearly non-existent refractory period

He still had no idea how the ever-loving fuck he was going to fake either of those.

* * *

Meanwhile, Rey was doing some internet research of her own:

_ best lube to imitate heat slick _

_ how to take a knot if you're not in heat _

_ how to fake a fever _

_ what does nesting look like _

_ what do omegas say during sex _

_ how do omegas act during heat _

_ how to take a knot if you’re not an omega _

_ beta alpha sex _

It was about as helpful as Ben’s research, although she had no way of knowing that.

* * *

Ben and Rey grew increasingly nervous as Rey’s heat app ticked down the days until her supposed heat was due to start. “How are you feeling?” Ben asked the morning before H-Day. 

“Fine, I guess.” Was she supposed to feel feverish yet? She couldn’t remember when that symptom started in the heat cycle.

“Have you, uh.” It was oddly reassuring that he hadn’t helped an omega through a heat before. Rey still hadn’t figured out a good way to handle a knot, nor had she come up with a good explanation as to why her pheromones hadn’t triggered his rut. He’d been going off the assumption that between the suppressants they both took, that was enough to explain the lack of scenting, but Rey’s research had told her that suppressants didn’t do anything during heat/rut. 

It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if she wasn’t so desperate to please him. She’d never felt this way about anyone before and the idea of not being enough for him was agonizing. What was he going to say when he found out that she couldn’t satisfy him sexually? She had no doubts that he’d be able to satisfy her; knotting issue aside, he was so considerate of her well-being that she knew he’d find the perfect ways to touch her during sex.

“Have I what?” she prompted when he didn’t finish the question.

“Haveyoustartednestingyet?” The question was asked so quickly that the words were nearly slurred together, like he was embarrassed for asking it.

Last night, Rey had dragged the cushions off of her small sofa and pulled out every blanket and pillow she could find in her apartment and thrown them in a pile on her bedroom floor. There were plenty of Pinterest boards full of “cute ways to nest during heat!” articles, but she thought it might be over-the-top if she put any more effort into it than that. 

“Sort of,” she replied. “I don’t know. The symptoms don’t usually start until the last minute, and then they hit me all at once.” According to the internet, that was normal. But then again, Ben probably had about as much of an idea of how a heat really worked as she did.

“Do you need me to bring you anything?”

She shook her head. “No, just...you know, come over tomorrow morning and we’ll get started.” She forced her features into what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m excited to have you help me through this, Ben.”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Me too,” he murmured. He pulled away rather reluctantly a moment later; they generally had a “no PDA” policy while at work, and neither of them wanted to draw attention to the fact that they were both about to miss a week of work in order to go have endless amounts of sex. It may have been a necessary biological function for alphas and omegas, but that didn’t mean they had to make a show of it in front of their coworkers. 

Rey’s alarm went off at the same time as usual the next morning, but this time it was so that she could prepare for the fake heat she was about to have. She’d taken care of the nesting thing already, which was one thing checked off her list. Ben had said he’d bring her gatorade and heat snacks, claiming that “I’m an alpha who’s taking care of his omega. I need to do this for you.” Rey had never said no to anything food-related in her entire life, so it wasn’t out-of-character for her to do so. And anyway, he seemed so serious about the whole thing that she didn’t have the heart to say no to him. Which was the exact line of thinking that had put her in this whole mess in the first place, so maybe the lesson here was that she should have been honest with her partner in the first place. 

Well, it was too late for that now.

The next thing on her list was to find a way to fake a fever. As the word “heat” implied, omegas got really hot during heat. Once Ben came over and they got started on the sex stuff, it wasn’t going to be difficult to fake being hot and sweaty, but she had to start preparing now. She stood in the shower for ten minutes, the water as hot as she could bear, then threw on some sweats and an old t-shirt and did a round of calisthenics, praying that she wouldn’t tire herself out too quickly. She’d never had sex before, but she’d masturbated plenty and she knew that it could get quite, uh, _ exhausting _ if done for long enough. (This was something that hadn’t been apparent to her until she’d met Ben; she’d never been so thirsty for anyone before.)

Her phone chimed with a text from Ben. _ I’m on my way over now, _ it said. _ Call me if you need anything before I get there. I love you. _

> **Rey**: I love you too. Get here soon. I need you, alpha.

It was time for the final step of her “getting ready to fake a heat” process: the lube. The grossest online purchase of her entire life was a bottle of “Omega Heat Slick Lube” targeted towards single alphas with no game. The reviews on it seemed legit enough, and Ben wasn’t necessarily going to know the difference anyway. (Which led to a rather, uh, exploratory train of thought along the lines of “Has Ben ever used this particular product?”) Rey hadn’t quite figured out the most subtle way to re-up her lube situation mid-coitus, but with any luck, Ben would be so distracted by rut that he wouldn’t notice her pulling out more lube to smear all over herself from her nightstand. 

She’d given Ben a key the day before, figuring that an omega in heat probably didn’t have the brainpower to unlock the front door to their apartment. And anyway, now she could just hang out totally naked, covered in lube in an approximation of a typical heat-stricken omega. That still didn’t stop her heart from leaping in her chest when she heard the front door unlock. “Rey?” Ben called out. “Uh, I mean, omega?”

Right, that was a thing, wasn’t it? Alphas and omegas didn’t use their names during heat/rut sex, just their designations. It seemed rather cold, but what did Rey know? She was just a beta faking her way through omegahood.

“I’m in my room,” she said, trying to imitate the whiny breathlessness she’d heard omegas use in heat/rut porn. “Be—alpha, _ please_.”

The artificial slick lube was cold on Rey’s skin so she slid her thighs together, trying to warm it up. The thing was, it wasn’t that she wasn’t excited to finally have sex with Ben. It was something she’d wanted long before they started dating. Being wet for him wasn’t an act at all, and she couldn’t wait until she could pin him down to her mattress and climb on top of him so that she could ride him like she’d been fantasizing about for months. She was just so worried about disappointing him, and she wanted to do everything she could to keep that from happening.

Was it her imagination, or did his footsteps seem hesitant as he approached her bedroom? At this point, Rey was so anxious about the whole thing that she couldn’t tell what was anxiety paranoia and what was real. But then he pushed the bedroom door open and the dazed expression on his face was enough to talk her anxiety off the edge just a little bit. “Fuck, Rey. I mean, omega. I—_fuck_.”

* * *

Ben still hadn’t come up with a great solution to the whole knotting thing, but he’d bought a knotting dildo and shoved that in the bag he’d brought full of heat snacks, towels, and laundry detergent. He had zero confidence in his ability to get through the next week without the truth of his designation coming to light, but at least he could still make things more bearable for Rey if he had a toy. He knew from his high school sex ed classes that heats were excruciatingly painful for omegas if they couldn’t get knotted by an alpha, but they’d never gone over what to do if you were a beta with an omega partner. The toy seemed like the best solution. 

Still, nothing had prepared him for the sight of Rey splayed out naked on her bed, thighs glistening with heat slick. He knew that it was supposed to be an incredibly arousing sight for him, but mostly it just seemed...excessive. What had happened with human biology that had caused this particular evolutionary trait to become dominant?

Heat slick issue aside, Rey looked even better in real life than she had in any of his fantasies about her (and there had been a _ lot _ of those). Her hair, which was usually thrown into three buns that he found endearing as fuck, was all in disarray from the way she was writhing on the bed, and she was already red-faced and panting. From what Ben knew about alphas and ruts, now was not the time to be sentimental, but he couldn’t stop the words from flying out of his mouth. “You are so beautiful.”

Rey blinked, seeming to break out of character. “I am?”

Were omegas supposed to be this coherent at the start of a heat?

“I mean,” she said, sliding her hand down her stomach to rest between her legs, “take your clothes off because I need you, alpha.”

“Right, yes, of course.” He didn’t waste any time pulling his shirt off, but he hesitated with the button on his jeans. If she got a good look at his dick, she’d know the truth, and there was still a chance for them to get through this without the detail of his true designation coming to light.

“What’s wrong?” The words were tinged with a hint of _ You don’t want me? _ and the idea of rejecting anything about Rey, even the ungodly amounts of bodily fluids, was abhorrent to Ben.

“Nothing!” _ Quick, how to play this? _ He should have rehearsed this plan before getting here. “I, uh. Can I go down on you?” He wasn’t so repulsed by the slick situation that he didn’t want to fulfill a fantasy that had been kicking around in his head for the past six months. Besides, the longer he could put off the disappointment she’d feel over his lack of knot, the better.

“I—wait,” she said, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Don’t you want to knot me?” 

“Of course I do!” Okay, maybe it wasn’t the knotting specifically that he wanted, but he desperately wanted to know how Rey would feel when he was buried deep inside her. That part wasn’t a lie.

“Then what’s the problem?” 

_ The problem is the critical piece of anatomy I’m missing, _ he thought. “There’s no problem,” he said. “How about, uh.” Time for plan B, then. “Can I blindfold you?”

“Can you _ what _ me?”

“It’s something I read about online,” he said, scrambling for a reasonable explanation. “It makes all the physical sensations more heightened, which is important during heat. Right?” _ Great, I’m probably heatsplaining to an omega. _

“But…” Emotions flickered over her face, too many to count. “I want to see your face when you enter me for the first time.”

_ Fuuuuuuuck. _ There was no way he could say no to that, even if he wanted to. He’d just have to hope for the best with the knotting situation. Maybe she wouldn’t even notice. Something in his expression must have given her an answer, because some of the tension left her shoulders. “Kiss me,” she said. 

Well, at least that was something he couldn’t mess up, regardless of his genital situation.

Letting himself get distracted by kissing Rey was the best move for Ben’s fake-rut anxiety. He wasn’t even bothered by the mess Rey made of his jeans as she tugged him down on top of her. Her skin was less hot than he’d have expected from an omega in heat, but that didn’t seem like a bad thing. And being pressed up against her like this, well. Knot or no knot, he couldn’t stand much more of it. Rey seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she wasted no time in tugging at his waistband. _ Okay okay okay okay, _ he told himself. _ This is happening. THIS. IS. HAPPENING. _

Omegas didn’t need foreplay before penetration during heat. That was one of the major hallmarks of it, and it was why there was never any foreplay in heat/rut porn. They were always loose and slick and ready to be filled with knotting dick. So it was unexpected that he met as much resistance as he did as he slid his dick inside of her. Just the tip was in, and already he could tell something was wrong. She was too tight, especially for someone who was begging to be knotted. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked through gritted teeth. His muscles were locked into place, partially out of concern for Rey, but mostly because he wasn’t entirely certain he wasn’t going to come immediately if he moved.

“I don’t—” She squirmed, shifting until he fell out of her. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

Oh. Oh no. _ She knows. _ Ben scrambled for an explanation that made sense, other than _ I didn’t want to disappoint you with my betaness because I love you and I want to take care of you. _

“I have to tell you something,” she continued, oblivious to Ben’s inner torment. “I lied to you.”

That pulled Ben out of his anxiety spiral. “What? When?”

“About this heat thing,” she said. “Ben, I’m not an omega. I’m a beta.”

* * *

_ I’m a beta. _ Those three words were even more terrifying to say than _ I love you. _ There was more at risk here if Ben decided that this was a dealbreaker for them. He had every right to do so; after all, betas just weren’t equipped to handle ruts like omegas were.

She braced herself for the incoming rejection. As a result, she was completely blown away by the way he burst into laughter, like there was a joke she wasn’t in on. It didn’t sound like cruel laughter, but she couldn’t comprehend where it was coming from. 

“Oh my god,” he said once he was able to get words out. “All this time I’ve been so worried about helping you through your heat.” He paused again, too overcome by mirth to continue. He wasn’t outright rejecting her, which was a good sign, but in all of her research on _ alpha beta sex_, there had never been one single article about an alpha being glad he didn’t have to help his omega during a heat. “Rey,” he said, “I’m a beta, too.”

It took a minute for the words to really hit her, and then she was laughing just as hard as he was. He flopped down on the bed beside her, both of them laughing too hard to talk. “The slick?” he asked. 

“Lube.”

“Ah. And the app?”

“Fake data.”

“The suppressants?”

“Breath mints.”

He roared with laughter. “We’re such idiots.” 

“How the hell were you planning to knot me? Is that what the blindfold thing was about?”

“Not one of my finer moments,” he admitted. “I brought a sex toy. I wasn’t sure how obvious it was going to be that I couldn’t knot you but I didn’t want to leave you unsatisfied.”

“Oh my god.”

It took them a while to stop laughing, and by then the heat slick lube had started to dry, leaving half of their bodies stiff and slightly tacky, which then brought on another round of laughter at the whole situation and their mutual stupidity. “Everyone just assumes I’m an alpha because of how I look,” Ben explained. “I assumed you liked me because you were an omega, and I was afraid to disappoint you.”

The implication that she only liked him for his designation broke Rey’s heart, quieting her laughter. “I liked you from the moment I met you, regardless of designation,” she told him. “It wasn’t like I could scent you or any of that nonsense. I like you for you.” 

It took him a minute to react to that, during which his ears turned red and he stared at her like he couldn’t believe she was real. “For what it’s worth,” he finally said, “Your designation never played any role in my feelings for you, either.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then: “So can we go shower? Because we’re covered in this lube I bought online…”

**Author's Note:**

> jesus christ, i never want to write the phrase "heat slick" ever again.
> 
> [in case you missed me livetweeting my breakdown about writing this, here's the thread of me losing my goddamn mind over this trope](https://twitter.com/r_saltghoul/status/1172999845335961600).
> 
> i am also on tumblr as [radioactivesaltghoul](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/).


End file.
